Thanksgiving, Nanowrimo, and the November Wrap-Up!

Lol, jk. You know me better than that. I could never sum it all up in like two sentences. But let me start with: Thank God November is over!

Thanksgiving was a wonderful and happy affair for my family. It was the first year in four that I actually got to be HOME for the holiday, having been too far away in college to come home for something as short as a 4-day weekend, and yet it felt like I’d never left. (Except for a few things that everyone else took as tradition that I wasn’t familiar with, since right after I left they started having dinner at my Aunt and Uncle’s house.)

We stuffed ourselves silly, took a nap, ate some more, watched some of the dog show (I don’t like Football,) then played a game of Phase 10 until late in the evening. My sister won. There was a lot of grumbling, because we’re all terrible, cursing cutthroats when it comes to games. My aunt can’t even play with us–she’s such a pacifist, ha ha.

Then I had a crummy night where I absolutely NEEDED to sleep, because as I’m in retail I worked on Black Friday, but my body was having none of it. I actually was physically ill, which I rarely ever am. THANKSGIVING DINNER RETRIBUTION. TMI, sorry. Anyway, so I got about an hours worth of sleep before I had to go to work for 10 hours.

Luckily, Macy’s wasn’t all that busy, and even though I was training 2 new seasonals at once while also working, everything went off without a hitch. We got to wear tennis shoes, they put out food for us, and even let me wear my ugly Christmas sweater to work. It doesn’t get much better than that, really.

The next day, the Ultimate Day of November, brought the last day for Nanowrimo and saw me about 8k words behind. Yikes! And since I had a lunch engagement and plans for the evening, I was sweating it, let me tell you. The thought of being so close to finishing and just… not. That was horrible. So I wrote when I woke up, wrote a bit at my grandparent’s after lunch, and wrote more before I got picked up by my friends to go see Frozen. Returning home later that night, a little drunk, I proceeded to yank the last 1600 words out of myself and validate.

Seeing that “WINNER!” screen was never so sweet, I’m sure.

I mean, it was my first win. Unfortunately I was punchy from lack of sleep and alcohol, but I still took a long minute to appreciate it and print out my certificate before I passed out, hence finishing up my November with a creative BANG.

YAY, I WON NANOWRIMO!!!

This month has been a roller-coaster for me, but I really think I got more in-touch with myself as a writer because of it. Thank you to everyone who has followed along–December will no doubt be a crazy one too (work, more work, my birthday, Christmas, my birthday PARTY, work some more…) but I’ll get through it, and hopefully bring over some of the habits I learned from Nano about writing every day. (Or at least trying to write most days.)

On the front of The Life of Gaia, there are a lot of upcoming exciting things! I’m going to do a more formal post on that later, but for now just know that I will soon be posting Chapter 2 on Jukepopserials.com. After that, I promise that the updates will be more regular without Nano breathing down my neck–pinkie-swear!

In other news,

friend, writer and all-around cool person Michelle Proulx just made a website solely for her book Imminent Danger. It’s cool, it’s futuristic-y, and my art is all over the place–what more can you ask for?! So go check it out. 🙂 http://imminentdanger.weebly.com/

Also, Frozen and The Day of the Doctor, the two movies I’ve seen recently, WERE BOTH FLIPPING AMAZING. Watch them. Well, don’t watch TDOTD unless you already watch Doctor Who of course, or it will make very little sense. But no pre-req for Frozen–SEE IT!!

(Song I’ve been playing a lot since watching it…)

So, in summation, I hope all of your holidays’ were awesome, that you’re all doing well, and that we’ll get to see more of one another in the future.

6 thoughts on “Thanksgiving, Nanowrimo, and the November Wrap-Up!”

Congrats on winning NaNo! I knew you could do it 🙂 Those last 8k words sounded absolutely exhausting — kudos for powering through and getting them done!!!!

Thanks for the website shout out 🙂

And Frozen was AMAZING!!! I would have liked another song at the end — and it would also have been cool of Hans’ twelve brothers showed up to deal with their wayward lil’ bro (hilarity!) — but it was still great the way it was 🙂 My song of choice is “Do you want to build a snowman?” — it was just an adorable song, and really sad at the same time, and I love it!!!

Thanks so much! =D I’m glad YOU knew it, lol. I wasn’t so sure there at the end; it got a little touch-and-go. BUT YAY! All of the glory is mine.
Wait, there’s not really much glory?
Oh well, I got a print-out certificate, I’m good.
x)
That WOULD have been fun! My friend Amanda was having like, an absolute life crisis in that movie theater–she made more noise than any of the kids. She was gasping all the time, and was having a mental breakdown at the fact that she liked Hans so much but then Anna was getting on so well with Cristoff. She’s like, WHO DO I ROOT FOR?!
But our other friend totally called it, so. I hate how she’s always right. xD

I TOTALLY didn’t see the Hans-being-evil thing coming. I think Amanda and I were in the same boat — I loved Hans after that adorable duet he sang with Anna, and every time Cristoff was onscreen I was torn between “he’s so awesome, they’d be perfect together!” and “but Hans is soooooo cool!”. And then when those trolls were like “get the fiancee out of the way” I wanted to punch them. But they were projections on a screen, so sadly I couldn’t.

Yeah, that was pretty much the gamut of emotions she was going through. xDD It was kind of hilarious to watch, actually. But I’ve given up ever trying to guess these things–Rapunzel’s tears being magical in Tangled? Didn’t even see that. I think it’s just so that I’ll be surprised no matter what happens, you know? But also I’m strangely bad at figuring out storylines, unless you’re a Nora Roberts novel–then I’ve got it in the first 5 pages.

You know, when I’m purposely trying to figure out a storyline, I’m pretty good at it. But that only happens when I’m not particularly interested in the movie, giving me lots of time to analyze it. Whereas when I’m watching a movie that enthralls me, I don’t have time to figure out what’s going to happen because I’m busy living in the moment! Maybe you’re the same way? 🙂